This study seeks to elucidate the social, political and economic factors which influenced popular and professional attitudes toward opiates in nineteenth century Britain. We will describe the cultural context within which British beliefs about opiates emerged, changed, and became codified. Identification of the patterns and processes of opiate use will permit comparison with similar processes operating today in both Britain and America. It is impossible to understand current attitudes toward opiate use without understanding how they were derived. The work, involving archival, statistical, and bibliographic research in the UK and the USA, will lead to the isolation of parameters of choice within the therapeutic context (i.e. when and why physicians and self-medicating laymen choose opiates out of a range of therapeutic substances). It will permit identification of circumstances within which members of different health professions (i.e. pharmacy and medicine) may complete in defining problems of common concern. It will also trace the course of a therapeutic innovation (i.e. widespread medicinal use of opiates) in Britain, thus providing material to compare with the American case, and finally, will describe the processes leading to the evolution and definition of a 'social problem', i.e. narcotics addiction.